White House Autumn (10 page)

Meg shook her head. “No. I mean, thanks, but I’m fine. I’m just—you’re right; I should get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” Beth said. “But, if you need to talk, just call me. I mean, even later tonight, if you want. I’ll leave my cell on. Okay?”

Meg nodded sleepily.

After they had hung up, she stayed at the desk for a few minutes, resting her head on her arms. It was weird—spooky, almost—to have a conversation with Beth during which neither one of them made jokes. Especially Beth, who took great pride in
never
being serious.

Except that all of this was pretty god-damn serious.

She sat up and looked around at her parents’ room. It was large and impressive, but somehow cozy. That is, when her parents were there. Except during the summer, they would almost always have a fire going and the whole family would watch television—mostly
movies, or Red Sox games—instead of going to the solarium or to their rooms.

But, tonight, it didn’t seem cozy at all. It seemed—abandoned. Scary, even.

Her mother usually sat at the desk, going through paperwork until she was worn out, then moving to the bed, where Neal and Meg’s father would be, Meg’s father reading, as well as half-watching the television. Steven would be in an easy chair or lying on the carpet, and Meg would sit on the couch, holding homework on her lap so that her parents would think she was doing it. Every now and then, she would even complete a physics problem or translate a paragraph of her latest French reading.

One of the butlers or stewards almost always brought in popcorn, or just-out-of-the-oven cookies, and Steven and Neal would each eat about twice as much as the rest of them put together.

Of course, lots of nights, her parents would be out making appearances, or there would be dinners and receptions downstairs. There were always foreign dignitaries, soldiers, or movie stars to honor. Astronauts, professional athletes, Nobel Peace Prize winners, famous artists and musicians—at this point, she had met so many celebrities that she was no longer even the slightest bit intimidated or impressed by them. She wasn’t a big fan of evening gowns, but if interesting guests had been invited, she usually went, with Josh as her escort. Sometimes, directors would come to screen their latest movies in the downstairs theater, and Meg
always
went to those.

Her parents’ Siamese cats, Adlai and Sidney, were asleep on the bed, and she went over to pat them. There were books and magazines on both bedside tables; her father’s stacked haphazardly, her mother’s organized by height and size, the edges perfectly aligned. Her mother always set aside some time, right before going to sleep, to read fiction for a while, and it was one of the few things she ever did just to relax. She wasn’t very good at lounging around and doing nothing—although Meg had offered to give her lessons—and
when she played tennis or exercised in the third floor workout room, she was usually so competitive and self-demanding that it couldn’t really be described as relaxation.

Early one Saturday morning, Meg had walked into her parents’ room and found her mother sitting on the couch in a black skirt and silk shirt, her hands folded in her lap. “What are you doing?” Meg had asked, and her mother frowned and said, “Nothing.” Meg had looked around at the crowded desk, the morning newspapers and briefing reports everywhere, and the untouched coffee. “Aren’t you going to have breakfast?” she asked, very hungry. “I don’t really feel like it,” her mother said, then frowned again. “I don’t really feel like doing anything.” “So, don’t,” Meg said, but her mother reached for her glasses—which meant that she hadn’t even bothered to put in her contacts yet, picked up a briefing report, and started reading. Meg wondered if people knew that sometimes her mother wasn’t in the mood to be President. Were all Presidents like that? All world leaders? Surely, everyone woke up sometimes and felt like being anything
but
in charge.

Seeing how unhappy her mother looked, Meg sat down and started an inane conversation. Her mother seemed annoyed, then amused, putting her papers down, taking off the glasses, and they sat for about fifteen minutes, talking about nothing in particular, her mother slowly relaxing. Then, a butler arrived with a tray of breakfast—more coffee, juice, hot scones, butter, jams, fresh fruit. Frank began delivering the latest messages and stacks of freshly-generated paperwork, the phone started ringing off the hook with requests from aides, questions from the press staff, and about nine thousand other things—and Meg watched her turn back into the President again. She remembered finding the whole incident depressing, wondering whether her mother enjoyed her life—or just put up with it. There were definitely days when the latter seemed to be true.

Today must be a day that she
hated the
. Presidency. Meg sure did. In fact, she kind of hated the entire country. It was impossible not to
despise a country where Presidents who were only trying to do good things were shot just for getting out of a car.

She turned the lights out and was going to leave the room, then stared at the blank television screen across the room, a translucent grey. She hadn’t seen any coverage at all yet, but it had to be extensive. Christ, various stations had probably already composed
theme music
to accompany it. She didn’t want to turn the television on, but which was worse—imagining what had happened, or actually
seeing
it? The shots, the shouts, the blood—maybe imagining was worse.

So, she took a deep breath, and put on the news.

“—doesn’t
appear
to be a terrorist attack,” a grim-faced pundit was telling the camera, “but it’s always possible that—”

She didn’t want to hear—or think—about that, so she switched over to CNN.

“—yet another in a long series of violent—” an anchorperson was saying.

Meg closed her eyes. She shouldn’t be watching this. Talk about masochistic. She had seen most of the tragedies of the last decade—natural disasters, tragic accidents, shootings, bombings, and, worst of all, terrorist attacks—on instant replay. Sometimes, the endless bad news made it too easy to shrug and say, “Oh, again?” There were probably people all over the country watching this, clicking their tongues, then switching over to see what was on ESPN or HBO. Hell, she had probably done it herself, violence often seeming both distant, and commonplace. Far away from
her
life.

The reporter was describing the scene at the downtown Washington hotel and Meg frowned. When these things happened, it almost always seemed to be a hotel. Why had the Secret Service let her mother go to a damn hotel? They had probably
wanted her
to go in through an underground parking garage or a loading dock or something, but her mother liked to avoid that whenever possible, because she thought it made America look like a furtive, third-world dictatorship, and that it lacked dignity for the President of the
United States to sneak in and out of buildings through back entrances and so forth.

An anchorperson was gesturing towards some film footage of the scene. “At the top left corner of your screen is the window where Bruce Sampson was waiting—”

Meg stared at the harmless, Venetian-blinded window, open about four inches.

“The thirty-six year old unemployed Sampson has a history of—” the anchorperson went on.

Meg flinched as a photograph of a surly, thick-necked, unshaven man came onto the screen.

“His previous convictions include assault with a deadly weapon, assault with intent to kill,” the reporter said, “and various sexual—”

Not wanting to hear anything else about
that
, Meg changed to another station, her hand trembling so much that she almost dropped the remote control. This channel was showing film of the presidential motorcade pulling up to the hotel.

“At exactly eleven-thirteen,” a solemn reporter was saying, “the President stepped out of her limousine, surrounded by—”

Meg gulped, watching her mother get out of the car, agents everywhere as she smiled at the press and onlookers, and staff members from the other cars began joining the group around her. The film was a little shaky—the cameraperson jostling for position, maybe. Her mother turned slightly as her father got out of the car, and the first shot turned her even more, the sound like a small firecracker. The film was confusing—a blur of blue and grey agents—but the audio stayed on, and Meg heard all of the shouting she had imagined—
worse
than she had imagined—along with three more shots. She couldn’t see her parents, but agents were piling into the Presidential limousine, which swerved away from the sidewalk, most of the motorcade right behind it.

She watched the pandemonium of the aftermath, too horrified to move or look away. People were shouting and yelling; agents were
clustered around Bert Travis, the agent who had been hit in the leg; still more agents were tearing across the street towards the building from which the shots had come. Her hand was shaking almost convulsively, but she switched the set off, the room instantly dark, and now silent, except for her own breathing.

Someone had shot her mother. Someone had actually—the man had taken a gun, and—Meg leaned back against her mother’s desk, her legs feeling weak. But she was supposed to be in charge, so she didn’t have the luxury of falling apart right now. Instead of sitting around and being upset, she should go check on her brothers and make sure they were sleeping.

She took one steadying breath and pushed away from the desk, going next door to Neal’s room, first. His blankets were crumpled at the bottom of the bed, but he didn’t seem to be too restless, so she retucked him in and went to make sure that Steven was okay.

Opening the door to his room, she heard quiet crying. Damn it. She shouldn’t have waited so long to check. He was on his stomach, face pressed into his long underwear sleeve, his other arm around Kirby. She sat down on the bed, putting her hand on his back.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Don’t worry, it’s okay.”

“I’m scared,” he said, trying to stop crying.

With good reason. “Don’t be,” Meg said. “Everything’s okay.”

“What if,” he gulped, “what if she—” He took a shuddering breath. “What if she dies?”

Meg had to gulp, too. “She’s not going to.”

“But, what if she
does?
” He turned over, his face so flushed that she was afraid he was sick. “What if that’s why they sent us home?”

Meg didn’t answer right away, the fear sounding very plausible, one that she had been worrying about inside, too. Not that she could tell
him
that. So, instead, she came up with a quick rebuttal. “Look, if they thought something was going to happen, they would have
kept
us there.”

“How do you know?” he asked.

She fell back on her most irrefutable answer. “I’m older than you are.”

He sat up, his arms going around his knees. “Dad looked like he’d been crying. Do you think he was?”

Yes. “I think it’s just because he was tired,” she said.

“I’ve never seen him crying,” Steven said uneasily. “Have you?”

Meg shook her head. His parents had been killed by a drunk driver, and she assumed that he had cried a lot about that, but she had only been about a year old, and couldn’t remember.

“He looked scared, too.” Steven’s eyes were huge. “I didn’t know he got scared. I didn’t think he was
ever
afraid.”

Meg moved her jaw. What could she say to that? In very different ways, her parents had both always seemed to be utterly fearless. “I don’t know.”

Steven pulled his knees even closer. “It makes me scared, too,” he said, and she brushed hair—damp from tears, perspiration, or both—away from his forehead.

It was very quiet, except for Kirby, who was snuffling in his sleep.

“If, uh, you want, you can go to bed,” Steven said finally. “It’s really late and stuff.”

“Do you want me to?” she asked.

He shrugged his “I’m thirteen; I’m cool” shrug, even though his eyes were still filled with tears.

“I could have them bring a cot in here,” she said.

He shrugged again. “I dunno. If you’re lonely or something, you can.”

She had to smile. “I’m lonely,” she said.

THEY WENT TO
the hospital at nine-thirty, escorted by a veritable phalanx of Secret Service vehicles, and there were dozens and dozens of agents and police officers waiting for them when they arrived—more security than she had ever seen before. It was as though they were all expecting an army of machine-gun-carrying guerillas to appear—which was scary as hell. In fact, Neal almost wouldn’t get out of the car, and she had to hold his hand tightly and remind him that their parents were waiting before she could coax him out.

Preston met them in the waiting room.

“Your mother’s feeling much better,” he said. “You’ll be able to go in and see her for a minute.”

“When?” Steven asked, very neat in a striped tie and his navy blue blazer. Neal was also wearing a tie, and Meg had put on a skirt.

“In a little while.” Preston glanced at Neal, looked worried, and rested his hand on his shoulder. “We’re just going to wait for your father.”